Balance
by Dame Montague
Summary: A brief exploration into the mind of a White Mage pressed to discern the "purity" of a young heiress. (Placed 3rd in Dragonlance.com fan fiction contest.)


Elenora was so very small.  
  
The candle flickered to life at Raven's touch, the others echoing throughout the chamber. The girl started, her shift slipping to reveal a white shoulder and trembling chin. Raven closed the door quietly behind her, scattering a finger full of sand behind her to wake the wards within the beams.  
  
Her cheeks had gone a sickly pale while waiting, Raven noticed. When first she met Isabella's daughter, the girl had been rose-cheeked and giggling, barely large enough to fill her gossamer dress. Only a few months, was it, since that Midsummer's celebration on the Rosani estate? How could so much have changed in such a small amount of time?  
  
Raven was used to such changes, of course. Sequestered in her tower, she knew the seasons had changed when her apprentices covered the window and began hauling stacks of wood for the oven they burned during study hours. The Lady Rosani had taken an interest in her of late, and had dragged her to every function held at her home in the emerald country. Her life was as ripe as her vineyards. Perhaps that is why Raven deigned to come. That, and the Conclave was desperate for benefactors.  
  
One look at the frightened girl, and Raven could see every memory of her affair with the painter Isabella had told her about. The Lady Rosani had commissioned Bartello to paint her newly restored chapel with tales of divine lovers. Her artistically inclined daughter would, of course, have fallen for the rakish painter and unwittingly engaged in acts illegal to one of her state. All would have been denied to protect him.  
  
Lady Rosani didn't understand magick, hardly anyone really did not in the art. But she knew that Raven had some powers of divination and could tell if her young daughter's virginity had been pillaged or not.  
  
Raven didn't need magick to tell her that.  
  
"Elenora," she said in greeting. "It has been an active few months, has it not?"  
  
Elenora sniffed, watching the jangling spell components on Raven's belt warily. She did not reply, instead hugged her legs to her chest tightly and shivered.  
  
"Your mother charged me with divining the nature of your chastity, as you well know."  
  
Elenora blanched and began to shake harder.  
  
"Tell me for yourself, Elenora," Raven said, seating herself beside the girl.  
  
The large eyes grew larger, looked around as if surprised. She was such a small thing. "I've already told Mother the truth."  
  
"Which is?"  
  
"I am a maid," she said, lifting her chin. "And none can dispute that."  
  
"The clerics of Paladine could," Raven said.  
  
"I am not a member of their church."  
  
"They could still examine you, Elenora. Virginity is not a state of being in this world."  
  
The girl swallowed hard. "They could?"  
  
Raven nodded. "And if this conflict can not be avoided, it will be brought to public trial, and everyone will know of their findings."  
  
Another swallow, another frightened stare. "They would?"  
  
Raven sighed and crossed her legs. "Which is why your mother wants me to tell of the truth, privately, so she can protect both you, Bartello, and the Rosani estate."  
  
"She hates Bartello!"  
  
Raven arched an eyebrow. "Does she?"  
  
Elenora sniffed, dragged a hand over her nose. "She doesn't understand him."  
  
"No one truly understands an artist," Raven said. "I know that to be true."  
  
Again, confusion over the poor, small child. After a few moments of silent contemplation, the sobbing began and did not stop for a very long time.  
  
**  
  
"What have you chosen to do?"  
  
Raven closed the chamber door behind her and leaned against it. "This is not an easy decision to make," she said to her flaxen-haired apprentice, who offered his arm to her for support. "Elenora is just a child," she continued as they proceeded down the elegant corridor. "Artistic inclinations or no, she really had no idea of what she was getting in to."  
  
"Or who was getting in to her?"  
  
Raven eyed the her apprentice, who had the good sense to look away. "Just because you come from a line of magick-users, Theo, does not mean you can judge the people of this realm so simply."  
  
"Lady Isabella charged you do to exactly that," Theo pointed out as they entered the sun-dappled atrium. Raven sat heavily on the side of a marble fountain, touching her fingers to the clear water.  
  
"Lady Isabella is wise beyond her years," she said. "She assumed both truth and diplomacy from a White Robe as myself. There is more as stake here than one girl's chastity."  
  
Theo shook his head, blond hair parting to reveal the points of his elven ears. "I do not understand, master."  
  
Raven stared away from her apprentice, watched the bustling of one of the servants as she went about the day's chores. "From what I've heard from Bartello," she began. "It was a mutual seduction." Raven ran a hand through her hair, catching the beaded braid a cheerful cleric had bound for her at the festival of Paladine. "He's a misunderstood artist who married his first love. She of course hates him now and makes his life miserable. Elenora was the brightest soul he'd ever encountered, and so on and so forth . it begins to all sound the same after a while."  
  
"She is not a virgin then?"  
  
Raven gave a sigh. "In no sense of the word. Her heart and her soul and her body belong to Bartello."  
  
"And what will you tell her mother?"  
  
"Lady Rosani trusts me. She will believe whatever I say of her daughter's purity. The fact is, Elenora is barren. So her virginity is of little concern. But," Raven pulled at the braid, one of the beads dropping off and scattering on the ground. "Politics being what they are, if the Rosani estate is put into question, it will fall to her enemies and the estate will be lost to slavery."  
  
"A difficult decision."  
  
"It will happen anyway if there is no heir."  
  
"Then what will you tell her?"  
  
Silence. "Paladine forgive me," Raven said at last.  
  
***  
  
"I can't tell you how grateful I am for your aid in this, Lady Raven," Isabella crooned, embracing the enchantress fully and nearly twisting her off her feet. "I was so afraid of what would happen to Elenora if the judges got their hands on her. She is such a small thing, you know."  
  
"I noticed," Raven said, fending off the arms as best she could.  
  
"Bartello may be an excellent painter, but he is no good at seducing women," Isabella laughed. "My dear Elenora is so brave to have avoided his advances. She may love him anyway, being a silly girl. But I am sending him back to his wife as fast as I can!"  
  
"Excellent notion, m'lady," Raven said, having heard this all through the garden and tea time. "I shall be returning to my tower, if I am no longer needed."  
  
"Oh, but you must stay for the night's feast!" Isabella laughed fully. "Don't you mages need to eat? You are skin and bones beneath your robes!"  
  
Raven looked to escape, but already saw the hungry and pleading look in Theo's eyes as he approached from the east corridor. Truth be told, the food was terrible back in her towers, and the apprentices deigned to sneak into town as often as they could for a simple meal, regardless of the punishment waiting them upon their return.  
  
"Sir Danwar from Palanthas is joining us as well," Isabella continued merrily, having already decided. "Elenora used to play dragonslayer with him when she was a child. I am certain her affections will turn from foolish artists to his valor. He is a Solamnic Knight, after all."  
  
Theo followed as the lady dragged his master down into the estate's garden, which was already full of servants tying ribbon to the hedges and setting up the head table.  
  
***  
  
Raven's heart broke for Elenora that evening. Lady Rosani had insisted upon Raven sitting at her side opposite her daughter at the feast. It also afforded Sir Danwar the seat next to lovely Elenora as well, and his affection for her was barely disguised behind his mustached smile. But Elenora smiled little, ate less, and occasionally cast long glances at Raven over the course of the meal.  
  
But not even Elenora's wan expression could diminish the festival atmosphere. The Rosani estate was full of music and revelry, ribbons and song. Raven thought Isabella had invited the entire village to the celebration. Of course, when the Rosani vineyards are in full harvest and the wine vats are open and flowing with free vintage, everyone would be anxious to attend.  
  
Theo was suitably drunk when the dancing began, and was loping around the courtyard with a red-haired and red-faced lady who was taken with his elven charms. Lady Rosani urged her daughter to take Sir Danwar's arm in the dancing, and the girl followed his halting waltz to the spirited song. Eventually her white fingers curled on his shoulder, and her smile at her lips. While their dance resembled little of the rhythm, the joy remained all the same.  
  
Raven remained folded in her ivory robes at the table, a few meandering servants approaching occasionally to refill her goblet, which seemed to drain faster and faster with the rise of Solinari in the East. His orb was in full glow by the time Raven felt the first twinges of dark magick.  
  
Softly at first, the stench of food left to rot. Then the chill of shadow stirred Raven from her buzzing thoughts and festered boil-like, demanding to be scratched. Raven stood on uncertain feet and stumbled from the table to the sweeping marble doorway from the garden. She whispered a string of incantation, remarkably unslurred, and reached into the night to feel for the black strains behind the light.  
  
Someone screamed.  
  
Raven bolted from the archway, her robes nearly catching her feet on the stairs as the next scream sounded and the dancers scattered from their circle. Spells sizzled in Raven's mind, biting her teeth, and she broke through the throng of revelers to the open space beyond.  
  
The first thing she saw was Sir Danwar and his sword arching down upon a black-haired man. Beyond them, Elenora was draped over the inert form of her mother, black and red blood staining the white of her gown.  
  
"Bartello!" the girl screamed. But the artist was dead by the stroke of Danwar's sword.  
  
Raven collapsed onto the scene, shoving the servants away from Lady Rosani and shouting for someone to bring a cleric. The dark magick bled from the knife sheathed in Isabella's chest above her collarbone, which had broken and was jutting sharply from the ragged wound in her skin. Evil gasped a dark fog from the blade, and sucked into the wound even as Raven moved the yank it away.  
  
"Paladine be merciful," Raven gulped, and pulled the blade sharply from Isabella's chest, tossing it with a clatter to the ground. She pressed her hands against the spurting wound, hissing her spell and demanding the evil be released. But the blood came faster, stained darker down her robes.  
  
"Momma," Elenora wept, clutching her mother's hand and sobbing into her neck. "Momma, I'm sorry!"  
  
"Elenora ." Isabella whispered, her eyes opening blearily.  
  
"Don't talk," Raven snapped, weaving another healing spell against the cancerous magick in the wound. "Someone get a cleric!" she shouted again. The dark magick lapped against her fingers and streamed ink blood down her hands, holding firmly to the dying woman.  
  
"Great Huma!" Danwar swore behind Raven. "This is black magick!"  
  
Raven bit down the curse in her teeth and grabbed his arm, pushing his hand against the wound solidly. Battle-baptized, the knight did as he was instructed. Bright red blood stained his shirt from his earlier foe. His sword was nowhere to be seen.  
  
"What happened?" Raven asked as she fumbled for her spell components. Her fingers trembled against the leather strips tying her pouch together.  
  
"A man came flying out of the night with a dagger and attacked the Lady," Danwar said.  
  
"Bartello," Elenora moaned.  
  
"Is he dead?" Raven asked, yanking out a pellet of metal and a brush of sand.  
  
"At my own hand," Danwar said.  
  
Elenora's weeping redoubled and she screamed her mother's name. Raven spun her incantation with a glow of golden wind and set her hands against Isabella's chest to release it. Isabella shook suddenly, giving a cough of blood which spattered Elenora's tear-stained face.  
  
"Ele ." the woman wheezed, her eyes rolling.  
  
"Momma!" Elenora whispered, brushing the stain from her mother's face. "Please don't die!"  
  
Isabella raised a thin hand to touch her daughter's chin. "Raven," she sighed, straining. "Look . how strong . my daughter is ."  
  
And then she was dead.  
  
***  
  
"I failed."  
  
Theo considered his student carefully from the fold of his white hood. "Why do you assume that, Raven?" he asked.  
  
Raven looked up from the flagstones of Wayreth, her robes still stained the black and red from the testing. "I could not save them," she said shuddering, Elenora's screams lingering in her ears. "I let them die."  
  
"I told you to never assume anything, my young apprentice," the elf intoned. "You can not fail your test short of not surviving it. You decisions reveal the state of your soul."  
  
Her hands were thick with blood. "I worry for my soul," she whispered.  
  
"Your test is not completed," Theo said. "You have but one decision left to make."  
  
Three orbs appeared behind Theo as his image became translucent and then faded entirely. The white, the blood, and the shadow magicks all hovered beyond, awaiting her choice.  
  
"I thought I knew my choice before I came here," she said standing, her white robes tattered at her feet. "But then I cast them all into death instead of leaving the choice to the worthy." The ink black dagger, surprisingly enough, was in her hand at her side. She considered it a long moment before letting it drop.  
  
"Who knew neutrality involved both."  
  
With a blood streaked hand, she reached for the crimson orb. 


End file.
